Night After Night

Playlist.

King Crimson - The Savoy, New York, NY, Nov. 7, 1981 (late show) (DGMLive)

Riccardo Zandonai - Francesca da Rimini - Magda Olivero, Mario Del Monaco, Giampiero Malaspino, Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala Milan/Gianandrea Gavazzeni (Hallmark > MOG)

Incantation - Vanquish in Vengeance (Listenable > MOG)

Dennis Johnson - November - R. Andrew Lee (Irritable Hedgehog)

Olivier Messiaen - Livre du Saint Sacrement; Prelude; Monodie; Verset pour la fête de la Dédicace; Offrande au Saint Sacrement; Diptyque - Gillian Weir (Priory > MOG)

Joseph Byrd - NYC 1960–1963 - Alan Zimmerman, American Contemporary Music Ensemble (New World)

Kris Davis - Capricorn Climber (Clean Feed)

Ingrid Laubrock Anti-House - Strong Place (Intakt)

Dave Douglas Quintet - Time Travel (Greenleaf Music; due Apr. 9)

King Crimson - Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, British Columbia, Dec. 1, 1981 (DGMLive)

Will Long - Rosy Reflections (Avant Archive > Bandcamp)

Aaron Dilloway - Siena (Hanson > Bandcamp)

Jason Lescalleet - This Is What I Do, Volume One (Glistening Examples > Bandcamp)

Kyle Landstra - New Light (Space Slave)

Courtly Illusion Limited - Courtly Illusion Limited (Space Slave)

Tuluum Shimmering - Raag Wichikapache/Lake of Mapang (Space Slave)

Demdike Stare - The Weight of Culture (self-released)

Cool Person - Cool Person (Hooker Vision)

Grant Evans - False Flag Loops (Hooker Vision)

Scott Cloud - Saffron Bay (self-released)

Butch Morris/Lê Quan Ninh/J.A. Deane - Burning Cloud (FMP/Destination: Out > Bandcamp)

Catherine Lamb - Periphery (Engraved Glass)

King Crimson - Park West, Chicago, IL, Aug. 7, 2008 (DGMLive)

Brian Green - Balance (Bandcamp)

Gasoline Gathers Hands, Gathers Friends - Gasoline Gathers Hands, Gathers Friends (No Shade > Bandcamp)

Johann Sebastian Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No. 4; Cantata BWV 199 "Meine Herze schwimmt im Blut" - Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (Yarlung)

Sasha Cooke - If You Love for Beauty - Colburn Orchestra/Yehuda Gilad (Yarlung)

Béla Bartók - Concerto for Viola and Orchestra - William Primrose, New Symphony Orchestra of London/Tibor Serly (MusiKazoo > MOG)

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Flos Campi - William Primrose, Philharmonia Orchestra/Adrian Boult (Broken Audio > MOG)

Hector Berlioz - Harold en Italie - William Lincer, New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein (Sony Classical > MOG)

György Ligeti - Sonata for Viola solo; György Kurtág - Signs, Games and Messages - Kim Kashkashian (ECM New Series)

Paul Hindemith - Sonata for Viola and Piano (Op. 11, No. 4); Sonata for Viola Only (Op. 25, No. 1); Sonata for Viola and Piano (1939); Capriccio for Cello and Piano (Op. 8, No. 1; arr. Gandelsman) - Yuri Gandelsman, Ralph Votapek (Blue Griffin)

Minna Keal - Ballade in F minor; Marcelle Soulage - Sonata for Solo Viola; Fernande Decruck - Sonata for Viola and Piano; Luise Adolpha Le Beau - Three Pieces for Viola and Piano; Pamela Harrison - Sonata for Viola and Piano; Lillian Fuchs - Sonata Pastorale; Rebecca Clarke - Sonata for Viola and Piano - Hillary Herndon, Wei-Chun Bernadette Lo (MSR Classics)

Steven Mackey - Groundswell - Hsin-Yun Huang, American Modern Ensemble; Poul Ruders - Romances - Hsin-Yun Huang, Sarah Rothenberg; George Benjamin - Viola, Viola - Hsin-Yun Huang, Misha Amory; Elliott Carter - Figment 4 - Hsin-Yun Huang; Shih-Hui Chen - Remembrance - Evergreen Symphony Orchestra/Gernot Schmalfuss (Bridge)

Paul Chihara - Concerto Piccolo - Paul Coletti, Ben Ullery, Gina Coletti, Zach Dellinger; Concerto for Viola - Paul Coletti, Colburn Orchestra/Yehuda Gilad; Redwood - Paul Coletti, Jack Van Geem; Sonata for Viola and Piano - Paul Coletti, Vivian Fan (Bridge)

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber - Passacaglia; Irish trad./arr. Cords - Pórt Na BPúcaí; Edmund Rubbra - Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn 'O Quando E Cruce'; Alan Hovhaness - Chahagir; Nicholas Cords - Five Migrations; Igor Stravinsky - Élégie; Paul Hindemith - Sonata for Solo Viola (Op. 11, No. 5) - Nicholas Cords (In a Circle)

Judd Greenstein - In Teaching Others We Teach Ourselves; Shara Worden - From the Invisible to the Visible; Missy Mazzoli - Tooth and Nail; Nico Muhly - Étude 3; Paul Corley - Tristan de Cunha; Daníel Bjarnason - Sleep Variations - Nadia Sirota, James McVinnie, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Frank Aarnink, Daníel Bjarnason (New Amsterdam/Bedroom Community)

Anthony Braxton - Trio (NYC) 2011 (New Braxton House)

Catherine Lamb - Cross/Collapse (Absence of Wax)

Barn Owl - V (Thrill Jockey; due Apr. 16)

Coyote Image Medicinals - Coyote Image Medicinals (Kimberly Dawn > Bandcamp)

Stygian Stride - Stygian Stride (Thrill Jockey)

Nova Scotian Arms - Cult Spectrum (Digitalis > Bandcamp)

Tom Johnson - Correct Music - Andrew Nathaniel McIntosh, Douglas Wadle, Brian Walsh (Populist)

Iva Bittová - Iva Bittová (ECM; due March 26)

Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi - Now While It's Still Warm Let Us Pour In All the Mystery (Black Truffle)

Alvin Lucier - Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings - Lois Svard; Theme - Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert, Joan La Barbara; Music for Gamelan Instruments Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers - Wesleyan University Gamelan Ensemble (Lovely Music)

Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Penchant Mode (No Kings)

Coupler - Sunless (No Kings)

Inez Lightfoot - Three Weaving at the Well (No Kings)

Woven Hare / Elder / Knit Prism - split CS (Worn Habit)

Toshiya Tsunoda - Scenery of Decalcomania (Naturestrip)

Giant Claw - Music for Film (Constellation Tatsu)

Forming - Variations of the One Essence (Worn Habit)

Thoughts on Air - LED Blues (Worn Habit)

Jon Gillock at the Church of the Ascension, March 5, 2013

Jon Gillock, by Kenneth Dickerman/The New York Times

Jon Gillock at the Church of the Ascension, March 5, 2013
The New York Times, March 7, 2013

A gripping account of Messiaen's awe-inspiring Méditations sur la Mystère de la Sainte Trinité, played by a Messiaen expert on an instrument made to order as part of an ongoing project to record Messiaen's complete organ works on that instrument, the Manton Memorial Organ. Since no photograph accompanied this review, I've posted a photograph of Jon Gillock playing at the Church of the Ascension taken from Vivien Schweitzer's review of the organ's inaugural concert, on May 5, 2011.

I'll add, somewhat sheepishly, that this review initially disappointed me on reflection; I think I might have included too much background and atmosphere at the cost of musical and performative considerations. But from out of the blue came a welcome email from a good friend, who said that this passage in my review…

In thunderous climaxes the sanctuary shook. Eerie intimations hung tremulous in the air. And Messiaen’s bountiful birds — joyful reminders, to him at least, of God’s omnipresent hand in the mundane — warbled high and clear.

…took her right back to her own earlier experience of hearing Gillock play Messiaen on the Manton instrument. That made me feel better – yet I wonder how much of her response was predicated on being able to fill in details I omitted.

Writing remains a continual challenge.

Francesca da Rimini at the Metropolitan Opera House, March 4, 2013

Marcello Giordani, Eva-Maria Westbroek and Mark Delavan, by Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Francesca da Rimini at the Metropolitan Opera House, March 4, 2013
The New York Times, March 7, 2013

I don't often get much direct response to my Times reviews in the form of email; usually that's reserved for social-media channels and the occasional comment here on the blog. In this case, though, two notes I received after this review came out – one on my home address and one via the Times – left me disappointed that I'd failed to clearly convey the real motivation behind the question with which I closed the review: "Still – why?"

So, to be perfectly clear, I wasn't actually questioning why the Met would devote its considerable resources to an also-ran of the operatic repertoire. Fact is, I think the Met could stand to explore such byways more frequently. A diet of nothing but consensus masterpieces, however well done, could grow deadly dull in time, and the Met does tend to trot out its greatest hits and recent reimaginings rather frequently.

The music in Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini is inventive and ravishing, no two ways about it, and I also meant what I wrote about the clever economy of its dramatic pacing. The production is an old-school eye-popper of the sort we see infrequently now, apart from Zeffirelli revivals, and the directing is basically agreeable, though I absolutely agree with John Yohallem's observation regarding one particular scene, well-stated in his astute review on Parterre Box:

David Kneuss, who restaged the production, has the Malatesta army in Act II stand at attention staring up at Francesca and Paolo as they confess their immoral love to each other, which can’t be the ideal way to keep it secret from Gianciotto. At least turn the soldiers around, hey?

The question at the end had everything to do with the two principal performers, both of them honorable artists. Eva-Maria Westbroek's sound could be impressive, but lacked a certain floating quality that her character warranted; more importantly, her enunciation lacked clarity and incisiveness entirely.

As for Marcello Giordani – who, as I've revealed before, was my ur-tenor ages ago at Houston Grand Opera, where he made an indelible impression as my first-ever Duke of Mantua in a Rigoletto that literally changed my life – I wonder if it was his recent troubles in Les Troyens that made him seem so cautious and troubled here? I have immense respect for Giordani, but this was not a comfortable evening for him.

So, to complete the thought I tried to telegraph in that final, lingering question, why did the Met devote such evident resources to this revival without the proper principal artists to bring out what's best about the opera itself?

 

Jennifer Koh at the 92nd Street Y, March 2, 2013

Jennifer Koh, by Jennifer Taylor/The New York Times

Jennifer Koh at the 92nd Street Y, March 2, 2013
The New York Times, March 5, 2013

I specifically remember thinking, as Jennifer Koh managed to give each voice in Bach's fugues its own sound and personality, that the shadows playing on the wall behind her served as perfect illustrations for the sensation I was experiencing. I thought about mentioning this unique shadowplay in my concert review, but ultimately decided against it. Had I known that this particular gorgeous photo by Jennifer Taylor would accompany the review, I certainly would have chosen differently.

Simply put, Koh, who I profiled for the Times earlier this year, is a supremely gifted, extraordinarily focused and motivated artist, and this was a very special concert. If it doesn't end up on some year-end list I'll be compelled to create, it will have been a remarkable year indeed; right now, it's a lock.

Playlist.

Quartz Safari - Quartz Safari (Fadeaway Tapes)

Jean Sibelius - Symphonies Nos. 1 and 4 - Minnesota Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä (Bis)

Philip Glass - Symphony No. 7 "Toltec" - Linz Opera Chorus, Bruckner Orchestra Linz/Dennis Russell Davies (Orange Mountain Music)

Osvaldo Golijov - Oceana - Luciana Souza, Gwinnett Young Singers, Atlanta Symphony Chorus and Orchestra/Robert Spano; Tenebrae - Kronos Quartet; Three Songs - Dawn Upshaw, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra/Robert Spano; etc. (Deutsche Grammophon)

Nicolas Flagello - Passion of Martin Luther King - Ezio Flagello, Ambrosian Singers, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Nicolas Flagello; L'Infinito; The Land - Ezio Flagello, I Musici di Firenze/Nicolas Flagello (Naxos Historical)

Suffocation - Pinnacle of Bedlam (Nuclear Blast > MOG)

Josh Mason - Timecode Beach (Digitalis > Bandcamp)

Quiet Evenings / Sundrips - split CS (Fadeaway Tapes)

Trabajo - Gamelan to the Love God (Bandcamp)

Gerald Clayton - A Life Forum (Concord Jazz; due April 2)

Elliott Sharp - Errata (Neos)

Elliott Sharp - Rheo-Umbra - Orchestra Carbon (Neos)

David Bowie - The Next Day (ISO/Columbia; due March 12)

Depeche Mode - Delta Machine (Columbia; due March 26)

birds of passage / Je Suis le Petit Chevalier / Motion Sickness of Time Travel / Aloonaluna - Taxidermy of Unicorns (Watery Starve)

Thoughts on Air / Fallen Axe / Knit Prism / Trailing - split 2CS (Fadeaway Tapes)

Brian Green - Milltown (A Giant Fern)

Nodolby - Inception/Aftermath (Field Hymns)

The Cats' Orchestra / Regular Music - split CS (Field Hymns)

Pierrot Lunaire - This Love of Mine (SicSic)

Digital Natives - The Old Truce (SicSic)

Fluorescent Heights - Vendetta in Paradise (SicSic)

Glass House - Savage Times (SicSic)

Je Suis le Petit Chevalier - Dark Morse (Shelter Press)

Brian Green - learning how to read the map to get there (Bandcamp)

Richard Wagner - Die Walküre - Linda Watson, Edith Haller, Mihoko Fujiamura, Johan Botha, Kwangchul Youn, Albert Dohmen, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra/Christian Thielemann (Opus Arte)

Kyle Landstra - Sage (Cosmic Winnetou)

Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie Hall, February 27, 2013

Collegiate Chorale, by Richard Termine/The New York Times

Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie Hall, February 27, 2013
The New York Times, March 2, 2013

Here we are at Night After Night post No. 1,000. Feels auspicious, even if it's just a link to the latest of my New York Times reviews. If this particular report comes off as a bit dismissive toward a pair of today's most prominent composers, it's only because I know a lot of music by Philip Glass and Osvaldo Golijov, and compared the two works at hand strictly to their own stronger pieces.

Curious, given the accusations of plagiarism – or at least inopportune borrowing, inappropriately explained – on Golijov's part in recent years, that more wasn't made of it when Glass responded to a major commission with a symphony one-third recycled from his own film score to Powaqqatsi – and really, in my view, recycled to no great effect. Tim Page's Washington Post advance feature contained no mention of the self-borrowing, nor did Jens F. Laurson's customarily keen Ionarts review. Only the Washington Times reviewer noted the reused music with bewilderment.

(An aside: The Washington Times review has no byline on the paper's website. The online journalism archive HighBeam Research credits the article, rightly or not, to Julia Duin, a veteran religion reporter fired in 2010, purportedly for speaking ill of Times management.)

Presumably reporters and reviewers ignored Glass's recycling because the program note provided, written by Richard Freed, didn't acknowledge it. Neither does the liner note included with the CD recording of the symphony issued by Glass's Orange Mountain Music record label. But Richard Guérin, who edits the Glass Note blog, cited Glass's reuse of the film music openly in a 2011 post, and the point was also noted in the Collegiate Chorale's program notes at Carnegie Hall.

To be perfectly clear, "The Unutterable" is very good Glass music. And I don't personally take any issue with a composer reusing his own music; where would Copland's Symphony No. 3 (1946) be without its incorporation of his Fanfare for the Common Man (1942)? But the lack of transparency about it feels shifty.

More important, in the context of the symphony's two previous, very effective movements, a sudden shift to an earlier, starker style seems jarring. And the music, meant as a film cue, ends without any sense of concluding – saddling a heretofore dramatic symphony with a wan, anticlimactic ending that left the Carnegie Hall audience confused and hesitant to respond.

At the Kennedy Center premiere, the symphony's final movement featured more extensive choral parts and a brief, contrasting coda – which included the work's only instance of the archetypal Glass arpeggio. I've heard the complete original version of the symphony in an uncirculated reference recording. I wonder now if the removal of these elements wasn't a mistake, given my impressions of the revised version in this Carnegie Hall performance. (You can hear the original coda in the Richard Guérin blog post I mentioned above.)

Golijov's Oceana, on the other hand, is a fine piece on its own merits, with some positively thrilling choral writing and exciting episodes for its featured jazz singer. (One of the best moments found the Carnegie Hall soloist, Biella Da Costa, with harp, three flutes and percussion.) It's really only in comparison to Golijov's later, extraordinary Pasión según San Marcos, that Oceana falls short.

You can read a detailed alternate take the Collegiate Chorale concert on Oberon's Grove, and still another perspective on Superconductor. Vive les blogs!

Avant Music Festival at the Wild Project, February 16, 2013

Matoaka Little Eagle, Cleek Schrey, Mary MacKenzie and Jessica Schmitz, by Julieta Cervantes/The New York Times

Avant Music Festival at the Wild Project, February 16, 2013
The New York Times, Feb. 20, 2013

Last month I was lucky enough to get to hear a live performance of John Cage's Apartment House 1776 as part of the Avant Music Festival – and a gorgeous, inspired account it was, too. The concert was a matinee on the festival's second day; the biggest reason that it pains me to have fallen behind on blogging is that I ought to have found time to post this review before the festival ended a week later. (True, the review appeared during my self-imposed hiatus from work, but still…)

As my review says, how far we've come from the New York City premiere of this salute to the American Bicentennial, presented by the New York Philharmonic in November 1976. “Hundreds Walk Out of Premiere of John Cage Work at Fisher Hall,” the New York Times headline blared. Still, Allen Hughes was on the whole quite respectful in his review (alas, only available in the premium archive):

"Renga with Apartment House 1776" may not be great musical art (which is not Cage's aim nowadays) but it would be difficult to imagine a lustier celebration of the musical past of a bustling, brawling, sprawling, melting-pot nation than this uninhibited score.

Andrew Porter, in The New Yorker, found the work "tedious," while Richard Dyer, reviewing the world premiere at the Boston Symphony Orchestra premiere for the Boston Globe, called it "fascinating" and "elusive."

One thing I wished I'd noticed before I wrote my review: Matoaka Little Eagle, who sang and chanted the Native Ameican portions of Apartment House 1776 at the Wild Project, is the daughter of Chief Swift Eagle, who performed the same role in the 1976 performances. Fascinating.

Powder Her Face at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, February 15, 2013

Allison Cook and William Ferguson in Powder Her Face, by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Powder Her Face at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, February 15, 2013
The New York Times, Feb. 18, 2013

New York City Opera opened its latest season with a brash, intelligent and sexy staging of English composer Thomas Adès's notorious debut opera, Powder Her Face, which struck me as a finer, deeper and more nuanced work on stage than it had previously on record.

Having missed City Opera's 2011-12 season entirely due to the company offering so few performances – four of each production seems to be the new norm, certain lackluster celebrity events aside – I was glad to catch up here, and even gladder to see the fine results the company managed to pull off despite its considerable financial woes and other concerns.

The present season's second offering, Britten's The Turn of the Screw, was just as good, maybe better. (My Time Out New York interview with Lauren Worsham, who played Flora, will be in the next post here.) Two more presentations of worthy curiosities – Rossini's Moses in Egypt and Offenbach's La Perichole – arrive in April, both at City Center in midtown Manhattan.

Much has been written about City Opera's travails and wrong moves, a lot of it warranted. But on this kind of evidence – and on a few choice whisperings about future plans – I refuse to give up hope for this diminished but still vital institution.

Brentano String Quartet at Zankel Hall, February 12, 2013

Brentano String Quartet, by Karsten Moran/The New York Times

Brentano String Quartet at Zankel Hall, February 12, 2013
The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2013

The world premiere of Steven Mackey's thoughtful, engaging One Red Rose, a fascinating reflection on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, shared a program with cheery Haydn and grandiloquently interpreted Beethoven. Good stuff.